English Dub Review: Berserk: The Golden Age Arc – Memorial Edition “The Battle for Doldrey”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The Band of the Hawk fight for control over the fortress of Doldrey.

Our Take:

It’s time for the Hawks’ biggest fight yet. They’re outnumbered 30,000 to 5,000 as they attempt to take control of Doldrey. Despite this disadvantage, they fight well and wipe out a large portion of enemy soldiers. Plus, each of our three main characters has their own battle to deal with.

Guts faces off against General Boscogn. He’s insanely strong as he wipes out several Hawks with a single swing. He seems to be evenly matched with Guts for a while, but Guts manages to gain the upper hand.

Casca runs into General Adon once again. He’s shocked at how much stronger she is now compared to when they last fought. Adon resorts to dirty tricks, but even that isn’t enough as Casca handily defeats him.

As for Griffith, maybe battle isn’t the right word. Sure, he commands the Hawks, but we don’t see him get directly involved with a lot of the action on the battlefield. After the battle is over though, he confronts Lord Gennon, the governor of Doldrey. These two have a lot of history and Gennon has always been fond of Griffith. His whole goal is to capture Griffith, but not kill him. All these two do is talk until Griffith deals the finishing blow.

Griffith and the Hawks gain control of Doldrey and they’re all celebrated by the citizens. None of the Hawks could have imagined they would ever receive this kind of praise. Well, except for Griffith since his dream has always been to have his own kingdom.

This episode is a perfect showcase of how violet this show can get. The story and the action are the best aspects of this series, but it seems like most episodes can’t have too much of both. The episodes usually lean heavier into one or the other instead of balancing the two. That’s not necessarily a bad thing since I think this episode is pretty good.

We do get a little bit of story, we learn some motives, but this is more of an action-heavy episode. That being said, the battle is compelling and it’s hard to look away from.